The Lower South Island Seats
November 14th, 2008 at 3:05 pm by David Farrar
Dunedin remains happily red. Labour beats National in the party vote by 16% in Dunedin North and 12% in Dunedin South. This is a lot better than 2005 though when the margins were 29% and 28% respectively.
Pete Hodgson had his 7,900 majority drop to 6,700, which won’t lose him sleep. David Benson-Pope had a 10,100 majority and new gal Clare Curran traded that for a still healthy 6,000.
In Clutha-Southland National gets 60% party vote to 30% for Labour. Bill English trades up his 11,500 majority for a 14,300 one.
Finally in Invercargill, National wins the party vote by 10%, after losing it by 1% in 2005. And Eric Roy’s 4,000 majority is turbo charged into a 6,100 one.
That’s the end of the series. All graphics taken from the NZ Herald. When final results come in, I’ll provide a lot more data.
Related posts:
- The Lower North Island Seats
- The Central South Island seats
- The Upper South Island Seats
- The Central North Island Seats
November 14th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
More data? Inconceivable. (to quote a great movie)
Vote:November 14th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Bill English’s majority is the second biggest for National, John Key has an 18 000 majority.
Vote:Labor made little effort in the electorate.Never saw Labor candidate Don Pride other than at an election meeting. Labor needs to start putting up better candidates in these electorates, somebody that can identify with the rural-semi urban nature of the electorate.Labor has no organization.
Bill English worked hard in this rock safe electorate, door knocking in Labor strongholds of Nightcaps,Ohai and Kaitangata, all coal towns.He had a top line team which also door knocked in new part of the electorate in Queenstown.
He still ran about 2 000 ahead of the party vote, showing his ability to attract independent support.
Look for the Clutha Southland electorate to be among the forerunners of major industrial developments in the next few years.
November 14th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Southland has actually done pretty well under Labour but selecting Lesley No-hoper as the candidate was never going see that translated into votes and the threat to remove SIT’s zero fees did Labour some damage. Their campaign seemed very muted. I only came back to Invers shortly before the election but I only saw one Labour sign in North Invercargill and that wasn’t even on a main street. They really did very little to attract my vote other than a scary letter about two faced John. Democrats for Social Credit almost had more presence than they did but perhaps Labour was intent on shoring up its vote in South Invercargill (on the other side of the tracks). Eric Roy is fairly well regarded and he would have got quite a few split votes (mine included).
With a more sympathetic government Solid Energy should now have free license to dig up half of Southland for its lignite and a fuel plant may be built down here eventually too if the price of oil goes back up, which in the long term it will. We should also get another dairy factory and a wind farm near Gore once they are able to borrow on favourable terms. These projects will provide a few jobs but the taxpayer will be subsidising the fuel plant unless the price of carbon is passed on, which I can’t see happening with ACT’s influence on the government. I’ve never quite figured out where that fits in to the conservative idea of self reliance, apparently welfare is bad if you are poor but its okay if you are a big company.
Vote:November 14th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Innocent – I think you’ll find ACTs official policy is that:
a) they are sceptical about global warming
b) if something has to be done, that something should be a carbon tax, not an ETS that destroys our local industry and ships money off to Russia
Not sure how that is corporate welfare.
Vote:November 14th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
PaulL: I favour a carbon tax over the current system but it will still involve shipping money to Russia. All you are changing is the mechanism by which a price signal is sent and how excess emissions are paid for within the economy. Any emissions that are not paid for by whatever scheme National puts in place will have to be paid for by the taxpayer. Given the fuss over the ETS I can’t see them putting in place a system that makes business pay a greater share than it does now so instead business will get subsidised by my taxes.
The issue of whether climate change is real or not is basically immaterial because we can’t turn back the clock. Pulling out of Kyoto or not engaging with Kyoto part 2 would be economic suicide.
Vote:November 15th, 2008 at 7:05 am
“would be economic suicide”
Could be economic suicide?
If I was National, I’d publicly put the ETS and Kyoto “under review while suspending any payments”. Then just see where this puppy ends up world-wide before actually doing anything.
First to join, last to pay.
If payment ever becomes an economic requirement, of course.
In the mean time, heave the suspended payments in with the Kiwi Saver funds. The right time to start buying undervalued stocks is near.
Vote:November 15th, 2008 at 11:29 am
End of the series? What about the Maori seats?
[DPF: Good reminder - will do]
Vote:November 15th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Nobody else has made any payments to Russia. There is no need to pull out of Kyoto, we just do what everyone else has done and ignore some of the provisions.
Vote:November 15th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
So there is a difference between pulling out of Kyoto, not engaging with Kyoto part 2 and being out of step with the rest of the world and between hanging back and waiting to see what everyone else does. The former is economic suicide the latter requires some very careful judgement to get right and could be a dangerous gamble (maybe okay for a currency trader though!).
We have a moral responsibility to do our bit but we don’t want to be in a situation where we nobble our own economy and noone else follows suit, where we become less competitive and where we just transfer emissions to another country. The other side of the coin is that if we do nothing, countries that are pulling their weight will put up trade barriers against us and it will damage our international reputation. I think that publicly stating that we are reviewing our commitment to Kyoto would do the country enormous damage.
Our existing ETS is actually very weak and we are not leaders in this area by any stretch of the imagination despite the rhetoric during the election campaign. Labour was basically all talk in this area and never really delivered. It took years to get to the point of having the ETS in place and because of this dithering and a preference for finding a perfect market mechanism we have failed to send a price signal through the market early enough to decrease our emissions. A succession of ministers were also very poorly advised, particularly Pete Hodgson in relation to forestry. This means we are likely to end up having to pay the Russians. There is a nice irony in that National dragged their feet and opposed climate change policy the whole way through while failing to put up alternatives but that they now have the task of dealing with this.
Hopefully the nats can dust off Simon Upton and thereby get someone with a bit of intellectual firepower to find a solution.
Vote:November 15th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Innocent – this is the reason why a carbon tax would be enormously better. A trading scheme really relies on everyone else getting involved, and there is room to game the system at a national level – countries that don’t play quite by the rules get advantage over others.
A well designed carbon tax, on the other hand, doesn’t rely on other countries being involved. It is applied and remitted at the border – so our exports get a refund, our imports get it imposed. It only impacts people within NZ, it doesn’t impact our competitiveness. It is also much easier to implement, and gives business much more certainty. And it doesn’t create windfall profits for large incumbent interests. Of course, this last is a disadvantage if you were counting on the support of business in passing it
Vote:November 15th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
“Hopefully the nats can dust off Simon Upton and thereby get someone with a bit of intellectual firepower to find a solution”. How’s this for intellectual firepower, kick the whole sorry fucking bill in the arse, tell the con men that dreamt up Kyoto to go and screw themselves. “Economic suicide” my arse, sounds to me like economic extortion.
Vote:November 15th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Side show bob – to which a tempting response is “go away the grown ups are talking” or “do they actually let people like you vote?” The point is though, that National is in government now and they have to work out solutions to complex problems. That is a whole different kettle of fish to sitting on the opposition benches coming up with vote catching slogans and trying to embarasss Labour. National has to meet the expectations of its supporters and keep ACT on side but at the same time it can’t let our Kyoto liabilities balloon out like Labour did. Walking away from Kyoto is not a solution as I’ve indicated above. Its going to be really interesting to see what happens.
Vote:November 15th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Interesting to look at the stats in Dunedin. Conway Powell increased both the party and his own personal vote by over 2,000. It was a different story in Dunedin North – the electorate sent a clear message that Katherine Rich will be sorely missed. Even with an approx 14% swing to National nationwide Dunedin North only managed to increase the party vote by about 90 votes.
Vote:November 16th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Innocent bystander, it seems to me the bloody “grown ups” got us into this mess to start with. Why shouldn’t I be pissed off. We were told that Kyoto was the best thing since slice bread and the country was in for a windfall, what a crock of shit that turned out to be. If the “grown ups” had done their job right to start with we would have known right form the start what we were up for. New Zealand and it’s “grown ups” have been done over like a dogs dinner, much to stupid for the Kyoto con men. And perhaps you can enlighten me on how many countries have fully meet their Kyoto obligations, from what I have heard and read most are running a mile from this shitty little deal. If you believe sending millions of dollars to the bloody Russians is going to save the world then you have serious issues. Also they let people like me vote not just academic giants like yourself.
Vote:November 16th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Its good to see that you haven’t let your complete ignorance of Kyoto stop you from posting. No countries have met their Kyoto obligations because the period over which they are measured is between 2008 and 2012. There is also a 2 year delay in measuring emissions which means that no money needs to be given to the Russians by anyone until 2014. Given that the ETS has just been effectively canned we now have no effective policies in place to stop the Kyoto liabilty getting bigger, I would slam National for this but this decision is only the latest in 15 years of complete policy failure and Labour’s overall failure is far bigger.
Its all very well throwing a hissy fit at the Kyoto con men but what is your alternative? What do you think our future will be if we are the smallest and only developed nation that is outside the international consensus and is clearly seen to be not pulling its weight? Do you think other countries will just let that pass? We’ve just seen Australia ratify Kyoto and the US elect a government that is more sympathetic to the international consensus than the outgoing one is, so do you think that a policy of climate change denial and inaction has any future whatsoever? As a small country that relies on international institutions and international law to protect its interests, what do you think the implications would be if we ratified Kyoto and then turned around and give it the finger, as some people around here seem to want to do?
I’ve been impressed with Key’s actions since he won the election but by caving in to ACT on this I think Key has just failed a big test of his leadership.
Vote: